US-based healthcare IT firm eClinicalWorks is investing $30 million in India as it looks to tap into the vast opportunity in the Indian market.
“We will be very aggressively hiring in India and expect to spend $30 million within the next two quarters to build a new data center and augment our technology capabilities in India,” Aakash Shah, Director-Sales, eClinicalWorks, told BusinessLine. He said the company will hire at least 300 people within the next three months.
Totally self-funded eClinicalWorks already employs 1,000 people in India as against 4,000 in its headquarter in US. The company will be using India as its secondary data center to offer cloud-based healthcare services in different parts of the world.
The healthcare sector in India is expected to touch $158.2 billion in 2017 from $78.6 billion in 2012, according to a report by Equentis Capital.
Established in 1998 by Indian origin founders , Girish Kumar Navani, Mahesh Kumar Navani, Satya Chundru, Sam Bhat, and Dr. Raj Dharampuriya, eClinicalWorks has established the largest cloud-based healthcare platform in the United States, delivering healthcare information technology solutions in the form of electronic patient medical records, population health and patient engagement tools for more than 1,15,000 doctors.
As a part of its entry into India, eClinicalWorks is building a healthcare app for patients that’ll allow them to look for doctors in the vicinity, track their health records and book appointment with a doctor through the app itself.
The company has already signed up 40 large hospitals and 20 independent physicians on its platform in India.
“We’ll launch the app in January and will begin with full coverage of Mumbai and Bangalore. We are also connecting all major test labs in the country so that test results can be seen in the app itself and the same will be received by the physician as well as the doctor monitoring the patient,” Shah said.
The company will offer its healthcare platform to even independent physicians who can subscribe to its cloud-based app for Rs 10,000 a month. The app will help doctors diagnose the symptoms better and even check for drug to drug interference to avoid reactions between different medicines prescribed to a patient.
One of the largest healthcare IT startups Practo has been on an acquisition spree to capture the market before larger global players could tap into it.
The company has acquired four companies in the last one year as it tries to capture every aspect of IT needs in the healthcare system.